Gamm Theatre's 'The Children's Hour' delves into the power of the lie

Lillian Hellman's controversial 1934 play is about a girls boarding school and how a rumor of lesbianism destroys the school and many lives.

By Keith PowersSpecial to The Journal

“Girls boarding schools have their own tribalism,” says director Rachel Walshe, talking about the setting for Lillian Hellman’s play “The Children’s Hour.” “This play deals with hysteria as a contagion, and with the need to protect children, even in the face of pernicious lies.”

Performances of Hellman's controversial 1934 play begin Thursday at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket. Karen Carpenter and Madeleine Lambert star as the headmistresses of the girls boarding school, who are brought down through rumors of their lesbian affair. Eighteen-year-old Smithfield High School senior Grace Viveiros stars as Mary Tilford, the angry and deceitful student whose malice destroys the school and many lives.

At the heart of the original controversy surrounding “The Children’s Hour” was the focus on its lesbian innuendo, which caused the first run of the play to be banned in Boston (by the Watch and Ward Society) and other cities. It has, however, found staying power in the theater, revived on Broadway, produced in London and adapted as a movie.

Walshe uses Hellman’s revision from 1952, which was not done to remove its sexual controversies, but simply “to make it tighter, less literary,” Walshe says. “It was her first play and she was simply a more mature playwright by then.”

The accusation of lesbianism may have been at the foundation of the play’s controversial reception in the 1930s, but Walshe quotes Hellman herself in saying, “this play is not about lesbianism, it’s about a lie."

“Once a lie is launched, it takes root,” Walshe says. “After that, we see well-meaning adults acting in the best interests of children, or so they think. If it were about pedophilia it might be more relevant now socially — ‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ that sort of thing — even if there is no objective evidence.

“But the play is really smart,” she says. “It leaves everything up to the imagination. In fact, we never hear Mary speak the accusation — she whispers the lie.”

“I told them they were the resident tween experts,” Walshe says. “Grace is as truly a professional as any of the actors. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and her instincts are strong.

“I found myself swapping lines between the student characters, just to keep them onstage more often, to show the developing hierarchy in the girls school. I didn’t treat them any differently than the other actors.”

Walshe has not seen much need to update the play, or try to modernize it. “I went in thinking that we should divest the play from its period — it references the price of taxicab rides, and phone calls, and that sort of thing — but as we went along I thought that just muddied the gender politics.

“The play has survived since the '30s, and making it modern to make it more relevant — well, in fact the opposite was the truth,” she says. “The need to protect children, and the results of a pernicious lie — I don’t need to do the math for the audience on that. It would be disingenuous and condescending.

“We’ll just let the audience draw their own conclusions.”

— Keith Powers covers music and the arts for the GateHouse papers and WBUR’s The ARTery. On Twitter at @PowersKeith.